Shock the monkeys, heckle the grieving and blow stuff up – this is America!
In local news, our dear friends at PETA have called UW-Madison’s primate research lab an "Abu Ghraib" for animals, and one of our fine student papers indulged them with coverage Thursday. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: As soon as humans stop propagating things like Abu Ghraib against other humans, maybe-maybe-I’ll give half a crap and think these people deserve even a fragment of the press they get.
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At the state Capitol, both houses of the Wisconsin legislature overwhelmingly passed a bill Thursday banning protesters from demonstrating within 500 feet of military funerals. This was in response to a group of religious nutjobs who have taken to popping up at soldiers’ services with signs celebrating their deaths and declaring them bound for Hell, because they claim the carnage of the Iraq war is divine retribution for this country’s "tolerance" of homosexuality.
Now, I think most scrupled, sane individuals would concur that is a cruel, idiotic and disgusting thing to do. But America as a nation (supposedly) values free speech, even if it is all those things or worse. When we start requiring that certain forms or even topics of speech be less free than others, we’re already compromising that value.
Realists know such a bill never stood a chance of defeat ("Yes, sir, I support hate-mongering religious kooks taunting mourners at a funeral-not only that, I think they should do it more often and with more venom!"), but it’s still disappointing to hear that only three lawmakers voted against it, especially when many who voted for it acknowledged it faces a serious challenge in court for being unconstitutional. Just because someone, somewhere says it doesn’t mean elected officials thereby endorse it. Why waste everyone’s time codifying already-existing moral and social opposition?
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On the national scale, Paul Krugman has a great column in today’s New York Times about how Bush flat out lied about the energy initiatives at the center of his State of the Union speech-he’s actually cutting back the precise alternative fuel programs he touted. The pre-address chatter was that the speech would center on health care, but still struggling with political PTSD from the Social Security "reform" debacle, speechwriters slapped together a bunch of feel-good blather about energy because they needed something, anything positive for the fearless leader to proclaim.
It’s also 2007 federal budget announcement time, which makes for all sorts of delightful story juxtapositions. For instance, let’s cut $39.5 billion in namby-pamby "entitlement programs" for such frivolities as health and education (including student loans, while we simultaneously opine that the income gap all the lazy people whine about is really an education gap), but let’s be sure to give President Bush another $120 billion to add to the $320 billion the Congressional Budget Office estimates he’s already sunk into his wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001.
It’s interesting how this proposal has even Republicans running scared, because this November is one of those magical Novembers that reminds many congressmen they are not, in fact, cloistered in a cozy little carapace of one-party rule. Real people not in the top few income percentiles-known in a bygone, perhaps fabled political era as "constituents"-might notice and care when programs they depend and the few they actually benefit from are cut. And then they might wonder and, god forbid, question why "defense" spending continues to get an automatic blank check.
The Pentagon also conducted an internal review proposing several cost-trimming measures. But if they’re not derailed internally, observers anticipate they’ll be thwarted in Congress by lawmakers skittish about wracking up "pro-terrorism" marks on their records by voting to in any way hinder the flow of funds to the military. Because what true, innovative, forward-thinking patriot wants to help his own needy citizens who could benefit now when he could be helping the hawks build up for an eventual, hypothetical war of the superpowers against China?
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At the state Capitol, both houses of the Wisconsin legislature overwhelmingly passed a bill Thursday banning protesters from demonstrating within 500 feet of military funerals. This was in response to a group of religious nutjobs who have taken to popping up at soldiers’ services with signs celebrating their deaths and declaring them bound for Hell, because they claim the carnage of the Iraq war is divine retribution for this country’s "tolerance" of homosexuality.
Now, I think most scrupled, sane individuals would concur that is a cruel, idiotic and disgusting thing to do. But America as a nation (supposedly) values free speech, even if it is all those things or worse. When we start requiring that certain forms or even topics of speech be less free than others, we’re already compromising that value.
Realists know such a bill never stood a chance of defeat ("Yes, sir, I support hate-mongering religious kooks taunting mourners at a funeral-not only that, I think they should do it more often and with more venom!"), but it’s still disappointing to hear that only three lawmakers voted against it, especially when many who voted for it acknowledged it faces a serious challenge in court for being unconstitutional. Just because someone, somewhere says it doesn’t mean elected officials thereby endorse it. Why waste everyone’s time codifying already-existing moral and social opposition?
-----
On the national scale, Paul Krugman has a great column in today’s New York Times about how Bush flat out lied about the energy initiatives at the center of his State of the Union speech-he’s actually cutting back the precise alternative fuel programs he touted. The pre-address chatter was that the speech would center on health care, but still struggling with political PTSD from the Social Security "reform" debacle, speechwriters slapped together a bunch of feel-good blather about energy because they needed something, anything positive for the fearless leader to proclaim.
It’s also 2007 federal budget announcement time, which makes for all sorts of delightful story juxtapositions. For instance, let’s cut $39.5 billion in namby-pamby "entitlement programs" for such frivolities as health and education (including student loans, while we simultaneously opine that the income gap all the lazy people whine about is really an education gap), but let’s be sure to give President Bush another $120 billion to add to the $320 billion the Congressional Budget Office estimates he’s already sunk into his wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001.
It’s interesting how this proposal has even Republicans running scared, because this November is one of those magical Novembers that reminds many congressmen they are not, in fact, cloistered in a cozy little carapace of one-party rule. Real people not in the top few income percentiles-known in a bygone, perhaps fabled political era as "constituents"-might notice and care when programs they depend and the few they actually benefit from are cut. And then they might wonder and, god forbid, question why "defense" spending continues to get an automatic blank check.
The Pentagon also conducted an internal review proposing several cost-trimming measures. But if they’re not derailed internally, observers anticipate they’ll be thwarted in Congress by lawmakers skittish about wracking up "pro-terrorism" marks on their records by voting to in any way hinder the flow of funds to the military. Because what true, innovative, forward-thinking patriot wants to help his own needy citizens who could benefit now when he could be helping the hawks build up for an eventual, hypothetical war of the superpowers against China?
When Mr. Rumsfeld's aides did try to pare down the services' wish lists, they were often outmaneuvered, analysts said. The Air Force was able to defeat a proposal to require it and the Navy to buy the same basic version of the Pentagon's next-generation fighter plane, an idea proposed as a cost-savings measure.
But of course, we can’t really expect the Air Force and Navy boys to share their high-tech, high-priced killing toys just to save a few million bucks, can we? That would be downright un-American.
posted by Holly at 4:05 PM
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